Audience Member
Full review on my blog max4movies: Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees can probably best be described as a philosophic journey through the paranoid consciousness of the narrator, which is presented in the form of a science fiction pseudo-documentary. Much like documentaries on conspiracy theories, the movie is cluttered with seemingly random information about beehives, ghosts, and weapon's testing – just to name a few central themes. These concepts are mostly interconnected but overall the narrative still lacks structure and coherence. The visual presentation is perplexing with distorted images and heavy use of computer-generated effects, but the abstract shapes and intercut shots of bees match the dreamlike and hypnotic atmosphere of the movie. Overall, the movie presents some great ideas (e.g., criticism of intelligent weapons), and the presentation is, although being a low-budget production, unique and fascinating to watch – even though some aspects don't come together all that well.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/21/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Glad I watched this. It's certainly perplexing and may require several viewings, but it has a tone which is hypnotic and subject matter which places the viewer in the middle of a rapturous fever dream. You can try to compare it to other things, but really there is nothing quite like it.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/16/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Weak in places, nevertheless a fascinating experiment.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/15/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Wow, thanks Joseph -- I've read those things too, and I agree with that reviewer.
I just bought the DVD/-ROM, which has a copy of the multimedia web site version of the film. David, if you saw it online, maybe it would be worth revisiting as a hypertext (or hyperfilm, I guess)?
http://waxweb.org
PS, everybody: this guy has some neat talks up on his blog and is working on a new film called "The Telepathic Motion Picture of "THE LOST TRIBES""
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/23/23
Full Review
Audience Member
I watched this, and it wasn't available on flixter, so I had them add it...but since there are two reviews already (on facebook filxter anyway), I'm going to assume this was here at one time, but was deleted...odd....
Anyway the "movie info" section is stuff I compiled from wikipedia and amg all movie guide, and does a pretty good job of describing the movie in general.
Because "Wax" isn't really like anything else Ive seen it's very, very, difficult to describe. It's post modern-film which owes it's greatest debt to William S. Burroughs, who appears in stock footage as our hero's grandfather, cementing the idea of literary lineage. The narrative voice over, plays over almost all of the movie, Blair's monoton, has a spoken word quality to it, similar to Sonic Youth's Lee Renaldo, and it helps and complicates the images on screen, tremendously. It's not for everyone, not much here in the way of dialogue, characterization, or catharsis, it's a film, experiment to be sure, but one better in it's execution than in just reading it's concept.
Calling this movie "overwrought" is the understatement of the century, but a simpler way to look it at might be... what would happen if weapons could be haunted by the people that they kill? In order to do that you have to make the weapons into living things, which is a big part of where the movie's weirdness comes from, but at the same time it asks us to think about the way we wage war, which is shown on t.v. so that it seems not to have a cost in human lives, when in fact, of course, the toll in human life of wars like desert storm is extraordinary.
So far the most accurate review Ive read, has been from an anonymous person from the U.S., this past April on IMDB , and though the author is obviously enjoying name checking his favorite books, it's not to far off. Anyway here it is, "
"Wax" is very likely the oddest film I've ever seen. Marvelously, beautifully, lyrically, and profoundly intellectually stimulating in all respects. Breathtaking in its scope and achievement. But very odd.
I have read medical reports containing sodium pentathol interviews and transcripts of schizophrenics' monologues. I have read memoirs and fiction by schizophrenics and hard drug users. I have read Surrealist and Beat Movement literature. I have read James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. I have read the visionary poetry of Charles Williams and H.D.
I have watched films by Kenneth Anger and David Lynch and Maya Daren. I have read Yoruba ethnic literature from West Africa and studied Aleister Crowley's skryings on the Enochian aethyrs. I have read H. P. Lovecraft and also Kenneth Grant's post-Crowleyan magickal writings describing journeys behind the Tree of Life which would have preempted H.P.L.'s usual nightmares had he but known of them.
"Wax" stands tall in that company. A hypnotic, hallucinatory, purely poetic fusion of words, images, political ideas, and mystical transformations, nothing quite resembles it. "Pi" (1998) tried for something as distinctive, but that film gave us a glowering, paranoid, tortured vision shot in deliberately painful close-ups. "Wax" makes a complete contrast in its joyful freedom of eloquence in narration and visuals.
"Wax" enhances life while critiquing it. The film employs early, simple computer graphics. It juggles idiosyncratic desert architecture, prosaic photography, and absurd juxtapositions of common images.
It tells a story of Middle Eastern honey bees along with offering a hard view of the original U.S. military actions against Iraq in 1991 (a time so simple in retrospect as to seem the good old days). It links Los Alamos with transformations in consciousness. "Wax" leaps beyond the merely political in its luminous metaphors for human existence.
You can find stronger films, more beautiful films, more linguistically spry films, but you will probably never find anything quite like this fireworks display of language and image. Think "2001: A Space Odyssey" on a home movie budget. Your grasp of reality (and cinema) may never feel the same."
Anyway that's my patchwork review, If you like "Naked Lunch", "The Wild Blue Yonder", "Specters Of The Spectrum", experimental cinema with a punch, or are just looking for something, really, really, really, different. You may want to consider, the world of teleivion among the bees.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/26/23
Full Review
Audience Member
I watched this, and it wasn't available on flixter, so I had them add it...but since there are two reviews already, I'm going to assume this was here at one time, but was deleted...odd....
Anyway the "movie info" section is stuff I compiled from wikipedia and amg all movie guide, and does a pretty good job of describing the movie in general.
Because "Wax" isn't really like anything else Ive seen it's very, very, difficult to describe. It's post modern-film which owes it's greatest debt to William S. Burroughs, who appears in stock footage as our hero's grandfather, cementing the idea of literary lineage. The narrative voice over, plays over almost all of the movie, Blair's monoton, has a spoken word quality to it, similar to Sonic Youth's Lee Renaldo, and it helps and complicates the images on screen, tremendously. It's not for everyone, not much here in the way of dialogue, characterization, or catharsis, it's a film, experiment to be sure, but one better in it's execution than in just reading it's concept.
Calling this movie "overwrought" is the understatement of the century, but a simpler way to look it at might be... what would happen if weapons could be haunted by the people that they kill? In order to do that you have to make the weapons into living things, which is a big part of where the movie's weirdness comes from, but at the same time it asks us to think about the way we wage war, which is shown on t.v. so that it seems not to have a cost in human lives, when in fact, of course, the toll in human life of wars like desert storm is extraordinary.
So far the most accurate review Ive read, has been from an anonymous person from the U.S., this past April on IMDB , and though the author is obviously enjoying name checking his favorite books, it's not to far off. Anyway here it is, "
"Wax" is very likely the oddest film I've ever seen. Marvelously, beautifully, lyrically, and profoundly intellectually stimulating in all respects. Breathtaking in its scope and achievement. But very odd.
I have read medical reports containing sodium pentathol interviews and transcripts of schizophrenics' monologues. I have read memoirs and fiction by schizophrenics and hard drug users. I have read Surrealist and Beat Movement literature. I have read James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. I have read the visionary poetry of Charles Williams and H.D.
I have watched films by Kenneth Anger and David Lynch and Maya Daren. I have read Yoruba ethnic literature from West Africa and studied Aleister Crowley's skryings on the Enochian aethyrs. I have read H. P. Lovecraft and also Kenneth Grant's post-Crowleyan magickal writings describing journeys behind the Tree of Life which would have preempted H.P.L.'s usual nightmares had he but known of them.
"Wax" stands tall in that company. A hypnotic, hallucinatory, purely poetic fusion of words, images, political ideas, and mystical transformations, nothing quite resembles it. "Pi" (1998) tried for something as distinctive, but that film gave us a glowering, paranoid, tortured vision shot in deliberately painful close-ups. "Wax" makes a complete contrast in its joyful freedom of eloquence in narration and visuals.
"Wax" enhances life while critiquing it. The film employs early, simple computer graphics. It juggles idiosyncratic desert architecture, prosaic photography, and absurd juxtapositions of common images.
It tells a story of Middle Eastern honey bees along with offering a hard view of the original U.S. military actions against Iraq in 1991 (a time so simple in retrospect as to seem the good old days). It links Los Alamos with transformations in consciousness. "Wax" leaps beyond the merely political in its luminous metaphors for human existence.
You can find stronger films, more beautiful films, more linguistically spry films, but you will probably never find anything quite like this fireworks display of language and image. Think "2001: A Space Odyssey" on a home movie budget. Your grasp of reality (and cinema) may never feel the same."
Anyway that's my patchwork review, If you like "Naked Lunch", "The Wild Blue Yonder", "Specters Of The Spectrum", experimental cinema with a punch, or are just looking for something, really, really, really, different. You may want to consider, the world of teleivion among the bees.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/18/23
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